Patriots Journal: Mankins more physically prepared for these playoffs

FOXBORO -- Add Logan Mankins to the list of Patriots players who feel better at playoff time this year than last.As is the rule with the Pats, Mankins usually does not talk about injury issues. However,...

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PAUL KENYON
Posted Jan. 11, 2013 @ 6:40 pm

FOXBORO -- Add Logan Mankins to the list of Patriots players who feel better at playoff time this year than last.

As is the rule with the Pats, Mankins usually does not talk about injury issues. However, he was willing to compare seasons. Mankins played through two ACL tears last season and missed only one game. He had surgery immediately after the Super Bowl, missed most of training camp, but was back at work when the regular season began, a fact that makes him proud.

“Well, it took a little while,” he said of his recovery. “I was ready Week One though, so I was back. I don't know if I was ready, but I was back.”

This year, he has battled calf and ankle injuries serious enough to force him to miss six games. As the regular season was ending, Mankins was one of the Patriots happiest with having a bye week.

“My body needed a bye,” he said.

This week, he was asked to compare how he feels now to how he felt a year ago.

“I feel a lot better. Last year at this time I had a torn MCL and a torn ACL. So I feel a lot better,” he responded.

That is not to say he is 100 percent. He had been listed on the injury report this week until Friday, when he was removed. He said the week off did allow him to feel better.

“Well, I was until the last three days of practice,” he said jokingly. “You know you always feel pretty good after a bye, after a couple of days off. Not having a game, you freshen up a little. So yeah, I feel pretty good.” The week off was not a full week off.

“If you get a few good lifts in, some good running and get off your feet when you go home, it’s always beneficial, if you use it to your advantage,” he said. The fact that it is playoff time makes the health issues disappear.

“This is what you play for. These are the games we want to be in and it’s always easy to go to practice when you’re preparing for a game like this. It makes it nice. You want to get better, you want to prepare and do your best in these games,” he said.

This season is different because with Matt Light, Brian Waters and Dan Koppen all gone, Mankins is the veteran leader of the offensive line. A quiet guy by nature, leads by example more than with words.

“Yeah, I’m the oldest guy in there now, but I think guys have always looked to me about the same way, a hard-working guy that plays hard football and tries to do the right things,” he said. “So, I haven’t changed, and guys still look at me the same way.”

The proper way to do things, he feels, is “being coachable, doing what the coach wants of you, putting the team before yourself. You might not feel good and you might not want to practice, but you still go out there and practice as hard as you can.”

Phillips on Welker

Apparently, there is not going to be any controversy between the Patriots and Texans heading into their game on Sunday.

Wade Phillips, Houston’s defensive coordinator made one statement that looked as if it might spark something, but that died quickly. It came when Phillips was asked about Wes Welker.

"Welker’s not Green," Phillips responded, comparing Welker to A.J. Green, Cincinnati's young wide receiving star, whom the Texans had to face last week.

“He’s a good player, but he’s not that big or a real athletic guy. He’s a quick guy that gets open on option routes,” Phillips said. “[Cornerback Brandon] Harris actually played him pretty good [in the teams’ first meeting]. He got a holding penalty that hurt us early in the game. But Harris played pretty well.”

Harris and the Texans held Welker to only three catches, tying Welker’s season low, in the meeting between the teams last month.

When Phillips’ statement hit the Internet, some tried making it into a controversy. But it died quickly, in part because Phillips took to Twitter to make another statement.

“Wes Welker is a great athlete and one of the best receivers of all time,” he tweeted.

Belichick's favorite time

Bill Belichick is ready to go to battle. And he feels his team is, too.

The Patriots coach spoke Friday in his final press conference before his team begins postseason play about how much he enjoys the playoffs.

“I think there’s an anxiousness whenever you play. You always have that unknown of going up against a new opponent. Who knows how the game will go -- what they’ll do, how things will match up, what adjustments you’ll have to make and how the game will unfold,” he said.

“There will be different beaks or situations in the game that will make each game unique. That makes it exciting. There’s no way to predict how all that's going to happen, you just take it as it comes. You never know how its going to go.”

Belichick, who will be involved in his 45th playoff games in his 38 years in the league, spoke about how even he has no way of knowing what to expect.

“There’s always certain elements that [are] a guessing game or playing percentages, however you want to call it,” he said. “This is what we’re going to do, what we think we’re going to get. This is how we think it’s going to work out.”

But that is not the way it happens. The coach, who grew up around the Naval Academy in Annapolis, used a military analogy to describe what it is like.

“It never quite goes that way,” he said. “As a coach, you want to try to put your team in the best position you can so they can be competitive. As players, it’s the same thing. It’s like when you talk to the Navy SEALs and those guys about when they go on a mission, how they talk about, ‘Alright, so we get there and we practiced going over a 6-foot wall, and the wall is 30 feet high.'

“Well, that’s the way it is in the NFL. You practice for whatever -- you think you’re going to swim across a 200-yard lake and the lake is 800 yards across. You have to get across it,” he said. “You get in an NFL game and think you’re going to get this and then you get that. Or you think they’re going to play this guy and they play some other guy. You face new challenges. That’s part of gamesmanship and part of the competition.

“You figure out which team can do it better than the other one. There’s always that unknown in the game, but things happen that you just can’t predict or you can’t prepare for because they’re working on things; we don’t know what they’re doing. They’ll come up with something that will cause us to make an adjustment. I’m sure we’ll do the same thing to them somewhere along the line. Everybody has to figure it out and make the best of it. That’s what makes this a great game.”